Two months ago I challenged my friend, Adam, to a bet aimed at motivating us to get into shape for the snowboarding season. We awarded points for mileage and elevation gain, which we tracked using Garmin GPS devices and Strava's web application. (You can see the official log of our rides in this spreadsheet.)

I don't think either of us expected at the time how far either of us would go, what we would learn about oursleves, or how our lives were about to change. All told we combined to shed over 30 pounds while crossing over 3,000 miles and climbing 160,000 feet of elevation. Not bad for a couple of guys who were in no way considered cyclists before...

For those coming in at the end here are the posts from the first 6 weeks of the bet:

• The Great Bike Bet of 2011
• More mileage, camaraderie, and road rash as The Great Bike Bet of 2011 gets interesting
• Injuries heal, centuries are ridden, & my first 300 mile week *ever* as the Great Bike Bet hits the home stretch!

 

Adam Wins!

Well, Adam won, but no one really lost this one... Sure, maybe I'm a bit biased because I'm the one who didn't actually come out on top, but here are the cold hard numbers:

In six weeks of riding (one was lost to injury for me and work for Adam) I rode my bike 52 times, totaling 120 hours 6 minutes and 45 seconds of moving time on my bike (that's 5 days!), while covering 1,445 miles and 74,142 feet of elevation gain! In that same time Adam spun his wheels 35 times, riding 111 hours 8 minutes and 29 seconds, while covering 1,589 miles and 85,858 feet of elevation gain!

We rode our last ride of the bet together, doing an 80+ mile ride in Marin covering Alpine Dam and Paradise Loop while chatting about all we had gone through, what we had learned about ourselves, and what our plans were going forward.

The resounding conclusion we had both come to was simple... We are both severely prideful and imbalanced individuals, our bodies are capable of far more than anyone (including ourselves) had imagined possible, and we don't ever want to get caught in a contest of wills with one another again! As Adam put it, "Imagine what we could do if we put our minds to something useful!"

Congrats Adam, you are a complete bad-ass! I couldn't imagine that you'd respond the way you did to the pressure I put on early. Thanks for forcing me to endure more pain, doubt, and fatigue than I thought possible. It was more fun and spiritually refreshing than I could possibly describe! Thanks also to my friends, Karie (the most supportive girlfriend around), and everyone at work who put up with our shenanigans. I hope it was 1/100th as rewarding for you as it was for us.

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Six weeks ago I challenged my friend Adam to what would become an epic cycling endurance contest. We track our mileage and vertical elevation gain using Strava and get points for every mile and 100 vertical feet we ride. (You can see the official log of our rides in this spreadsheet.)

You might be interested in my post on the first three weeks, "The Great Bike Bet of 2011". During those three weeks I built an early lead by coming out of the gate hard and setting the bar by riding 230 miles a week! Adam, to his credit, didn't let me pull away after my fast start. Picking at my lead little by little.

See also, my post on weeks four and five, "More mileage, camaraderie, and road rash as The Great Bike Bet of 2011 gets interesting." The highlight of these weeks being Adam's take over of the lead and my injury on a Point Reyes truce ride with him.

This is a post about week six, my first week back on the bike and the second to last of the competition. To say it was pivotal is an understatement!

My First Century

Saturday morning was my first day back on the bike. I still had a pretty big series of scabs, but I was feeling good enough to ride. I met friends at about 9 and set out across the Golden Gate Bridge and into Marin to ride the 100 mile ride that had taken me out the Saturday previous.

After riding a ways past Fairfax (about 30 miles) my support had to turn back as I turned onto Sir Francis Drake past the spot where Janice picked me up last week and into Inverness toward the hill on which I crashed. I arrived at The Busy Bee bakery around noon and hopped off the bike for some food. Realizing I had forgotten my debit card I turned pale, but the woman behind the counter told me not to worry, gave me my receipt, and told me to pay her on my next time through town. Without those calories the rest of that ride probably would have been unbearable.

I continued on past the spot where I had crashed the week prior and out towards the ocean. I turned back (stopping to shoot this picture of the Point Reyes cows) at the 50 mile mark and continued on through Nicasio, into Fairfax, got lost and found, and eventually stopped with 100 miles under my legs!

Adam rides 200 miles in two days, and I chip away at his lead!

While I was riding my first century ever, Adam was completing his second. Then, on Sunday, he repeated the feat! By the time Monday rolled around he had amassed a 346 point lead, the largest of the competition. So, I did what I had to and responded by riding 200 miles over three days, finishing the week with 300 miles (all over four days), and narrowing the deficit to 76 points on the strength of three 55 mile night rides of Paradise Loop!

After six weeks (three of which I beat Adam and three of which he beat me) we have each ridden more than 1,300 miles and ~70,000 vertical feet of ascent. With six days left to ride we are separated by a very slim margin!

Regardless, with effort and drama like that which we've gone through we've both already won. We achieved our goal of motivating ourselves to get in better shape. We've both become stronger riders, lost weight, and done things no one thought we could do. What happens next is anyone's guess!

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If you aren’t in the know, let me catch you up. A month ago I challenged my company’s CTO to a bike-off. We’d track our mileage and vertical elevation gain using Strava, a cool website that let’s you visualize workout data collected on your GPS device or smartphone. We'd get a point for every mile and 100 vertical feet and keep a log of our rides in a spreadsheet. (Need to catch up on weeks 1-3? Check out The Great Bike Bet of 2011.)

So, things were off the rails... Neither Adam or I were what you could call a cyclist before the bet. Yet, here we were doing things novices aren't spotted doing all too often. Waking up early in the morning and riding Hawk Hill in the fog. Going on a 55 mile Tiburon ride on the way home from work. Riding a bike with platform pedals and cages 230+ miles a week for a month.

Adam was putting the pressure on by riding 511 miles in two weeks. Meanwhile, we were both getting weary, sore, and even a little sick of biking at times, but we were also learning new routes, experimenting with our gear, forming rituals, curing common injuries, reading magazines and blogs, and becoming initiated into the Marin cycling culture. 

Week Four: My bike starts fighting me.

In the first week I had gone through three tubes, a tire, a spoke, and a little skin. So, as I was telling my girlfriend how much easier everything had gotten she cringed warning me to, "Knock on wood, or something..." I laughed, but it turns out that maybe she was right. 

So, Sunday I went for a ride in the afternoon planning to go for a long Paradise Loop ride into the evening when I met Adam coming back from his ride! He and I chatted on the Golden Gate Bridge about his day and my plans before he went his way and I went mine. Then the first minor disaster struck. I got a flat on the bike trail and before I could fix it my CO2 bike pump exploded (see picture) stranding me only 14 miles into my ride. I sent an SOS text to Karie and got picked up. Adam had taken the lead.

The next day after work I went to ride P-Loop again, but about 20 miles in I hit a pot hole and popped a spoke off my rear wheel. I pulled the spoke off, saw that my wheel was only kinda warped and rode the rest of that night's ride and the next morning's 30 miler with a wobbly wheel. The bike was starting to make lots of unidentifiable noises, shifting improperly, and the brakes were almost non-existant. So, Thursday, after finishing up a 260+ mile week with another P-Loop ride, I took my bike in to get tuned up and fitted with clippies.

Meanwhile: We have day jobs, you know?

Getting up before the sun is not on my list of common activities. At Yammer, where I work, it's pretty much common knowledge that if you see me before 8 in the morning that there's a high probability that I didn't sleep the night before. But, "War does funny things to men." as Max Fisher (played by Jason Schwartzman) put it in Rushmore.

At about this time we were working hard trying to launch a daunting set of game changing features as part of Yammer 3. Adam, as the CTO, was incredibly busy working with teams of engineers, QA, and product people trying to get everything banged out on time. Meanwhile, I was working on building landing pages for our marketing materials and help troubleshoot sticky cross browser issues. 

So, our lives had become rather interesting... there was Yammer 3, cycling, eating, and sometimes sleep. Everything else was on hold.

Week Five: Drama

Well, on day one of week five I had what felt like a new bike. I had a new rear cassette, chain, brakes, pedals, handle bar tape, etc. So, for the first two days I just rode some short recovery mileage getting the lactic acid build-up flushed from my legs and dialing in my new pedals (because I've heard that one can get a nasty knee injury if you get this wrong.) Then, on Saturday Adam and I planned to ride a century to Point Reyes and back together. A truce ride with friends. A chance to not worry about points while pushing ourselves a little.

That's when the unthinkable happened... About 52 miles into the ride we were coming down a hill at about 30 miles per hour when I locked up my wheel and skidded through the other lane and into the shoulder. I was shaking and had a one-word vocabulary (guess which word.) I just kept repeating that word on exhale as though it was my meditation mantra... Dan, who caught the event out of his peripheral, came back up the hill to help me. He offered to help me put my chain back on. I thanked him, pointing out that my hands were, "F"ed.

"I hate to break this to you, but your butt is 'F'ed too!" he replied, fixing my chain (see picture.)

We hopped on the bike and rode another 12 miles in an attempt to get closer to home, but eventually got picked up and carted off to Dan and his wife, Janice's, house. My girlfriend picked me up and Adam rode the rest of the way with his GPS off out of solidarity. 

I felt totally dejected... Had I just lost the bike bet? Was this *really* the way this was going to go down? I couldn't believe it. The pain was ridiculous. I wanted to ride, but it was impossible. For the next few days sitting was excruciating, walking was difficult. Just the idea of riding a bike was painful.

What is Next?

All week I had the anxious feeling that I might be out of this thing for good. Adam, himself, was bummed out, because neither of us wanted to win this way. But, here I am today, with thirteen days of "The Great Bike Bet of 2011" left and a 130 point deficit. I can thank the product launch for taking Adam away from riding this week and he can thank my injury for keeping me from mine. Come tomorrow, however, we'll both be hopping back on our bikes and riding for keeps...

One thing is certain, things will come down to the wire!

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I don't think anyone thought it would get so out of hand... Recently I was chatting with my friend Adam Pisoni, who also works at Yammer, about having a little bet to help us stay motivated to get in shape for the snowboarding season. It started simple, if you ride more than me you win. We'd track our rides on Strava, using Garmin cycling computers, and the loser would have to do something embarrassing. 

Making the Bet

Then came a question from someone listening in nearby, "What about distance climbed?" Okay, we'd award one point for every mile and one for every 100 feet of vertical.

"So, what's the prize?" Something snowboarding related. A new Lib Tech snowboard? Cool, but not embarrassing. So, how about a new snowboard and the winner gets to write a two minute speech. The loser would then give this speech at work while presenting the new board! Everyone got a little giddy at the sound of that...

"When should it end?" Since Thanksgiving is the unofficial start of most people's ski season how about midnight on Wednesday before that? We had a bet, I was to be the underdog. 

Week One: Setting the Pace

I don't think anyone saw it coming... I just came out of the gate hard and before Adam had a chance to react I was 95 points ahead (375 to 280) with a 236 mile week including almost 14,000 feet of vertical. I managed to cross the 200 mile mark (the first time I've ever done even 1/2 of that in a week before) for the week on the Golden Gate Bridge. This photo was taken shortly after reaching the top of Hawk Hill.

For a contest that the "experts" within the office handicapped at 800 total miles, I was launching a "shock and awe" attack, upping the ante, but also paying the price. I had three flats, wrecked in the rain, broke a wheel spoke, and got hit by a car. Not to mention how my body felt...

Ending the week by playing in a game for Yammer's full court basketball team was perhaps a bit too much hubris.

Week Two: Maintaining

Week one was my first week on a bike for consecutive days in something like six months. Passing 230 miles was cool, but my legs were shot. So, I rested Thursday (the first day of week 2) and used a big weekend to do my damage.

I stored up biking supplies and food at my cousin's house in the Presidio and rode 130 miles, doing laps across the bridge and resting at my cycling command center that weekend! This photo was taken during a refueling stop at my secret bike depot just after the largest portion of my 85 mile Saturday.

Meanwhile, Adam was launching his own attack. A steady barrage of 30 mile rides (5 in three days) helped him pile up 252 miles. He lost another 9 points for the week due to all the vertical feet I rode, but he had recoverd and reached his own stride.

Week Three: Getting in Shape

During the third week I wanted to play with recovery rides, riding faster over some rides, and pounding hills harder on others. I managed to not lose ground by folding a ride to Santa Cruz into my Saturday plans to skydive. I started feeling strong on hills for the first time. I had a bit more pep in my step too, riding a noticible amount faster this week.

The photo was taken at Pescadero Beach along the way to Santa Cruz Saturday. It was a beautiful day (78 and sunny) and a rad ride along the coast! Then I jumped from a plane, landed on the beach, and watched the sunset over the ocean. Not a bad day!

But, Adam's 170 mile weekend briefly brought him to within a couple points of the lead. It was the first week where Adam scored more points than me (44), but he ended down by 60. I finished it off by making it my third straight 200 mile week on the strength of my last ride, a 55 mile spin ending at 9:45 pm. 

I'm certain it will only get more interesting from here. There are four weeks left, but in the first 21 days I've already logged 29 rides, 701 miles, 39,573 feet of vertical ascent, and lost 14 pounds. I have more energy, my legs are a lot stronger (when fresh), and I've slept much better. One fun side effect of the bet is that my vertical ascent for the month (starting with the bet on the 6th) places me somewhere around 150-170th of 2784 cyclists (changes realtime) in Strava's KOM Challenge. UPDATE: I ended the month in 169th place with 45,872 feet of vertical ascent.

Trying to stay feuled up, hydrated, and rested is a constant effort. The fear of overtraining is legitimate. I'm always looking for ways to allow my body to bounce back and heal. Sometimes I just try and ride at a pace I can maintain while not exerting myself at all. I soak in epsom salts, I try to stretch religiously, my girlfriend rubs Tiger Balm into my quads until *her* skin burns, and I eat constantly. I took my first day off in two weeks today (10/27), but have had other days where I've ridden small 5-12 mile recovery rides in the place of off days. 

What do I have planned this week? Will Adam keep crawling into the race? Will he take over completely? Will I make a move? I'll try to keep you informed. If the first three weeks are any indication, it's gonna be crazy.

Want to see the up to the minute bike bet score? Check out the Bike Bet Rides google doc.

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Things continue to be exciting at Yammer. It's by far the best company with which I've ever worked! 3 million people at over 100,000 companies use our product, with networks representing 80% of the fortune 500, with 7-11, Ford, Southern Company, Shell and SuperValu among the new clients deploying our service this year! As a company Yammer does an amazing job of empowering their employees to do their jobs, they offer great perks, and, of course, they are hiring (Wil Everts sent you!)

Today's news is that Yammer has also just raised $17 million in Round D financing, bringing the company's total financing to $57 million. Here's what the press is saying:

Business social networking company Yammer has raised $17 million in Series D funding led by the Social+Capital Partnership, a new fund established by former Facebook Vice President Chamath Palihapitiya, VentureWire reports. Facebook is an investor in the fund...

More from the Wall Street Journal: Facebook-Backed Fund Leads Yammer’s $17M Financing

Palihapitiya said of the investment in Yammer: “Social networking is destined to have as significant an impact on the enterprise as it has already had in our personal lives…Yammer is the clear leader in enterprise social networking and is redefining collaboration, sharing and productivity in a way that will disrupt an entire class of existing enterprise applications.”

Yammer founder and CEO David Sacks says that the company, which raised $25 million last November, didn’t need to raise additional funding at the moment. But the opportunity for Palihapitiya to help advise, scale and provide his insight to the company was “invaluable.”

More from TechCrunch: Former Facebook VP Chamath Palihapitiya Leads $17M Round In Enterprise Social Networking Platform Yammer

See also:

• Yammer Raises $17 Million in Financing Round Led by The Social+Capital Partnership
• Yammer raises $17M from former Facebook VP to improve enterprise social networking
• Yammer Gains Momentum

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As you probably know, I'm completely snow crazy! I lived in Steamboat, Colorado for a season the year before I moved to SF (2005-06). The years since then I've kicked snow around in Tahoe, and last season I also got out to Jackson Hole, WY for a couple weeks. The only problem? I was completely out of shape. I hadn't done my usual training regiment in the offseason. So, as you might predict, within a couple of tram runs (4,000+ feet of vertical each) the first day my legs were gassed.

Do you have any idea what it's like to be surrounded by some of the most amazing terrain you've ever seen and not know how your legs will react when you go to use them? Go ahead, <insert your own impotence analogy here>. I hit the same wall three years ago which prompted a hard-core training schedule the season afterward. Well, a couple weeks back my iPhone alarm suddenly went off declaring, "Last chance to get in shape for the snow fat-ass!"

So, it's time to crank the rocky theme to 11, get out the leg warmers and head bands, and cue the sweating and grunting my way back from a tired sack of cookie dough into a snow demon! It's time for a training montage! 

Part One, Transportation = Workouts

• Commute to work via bike or skateboard daily. 
• Tack on a long bike ride after work 3 days a week.
• Skateboard around the Embarcadero over lunch once a week
• Ride an ever-increasing number of long hilly miles once or twice each weekend

Part Two, Upper Body

• 7 Weeks to 50 Pull Ups*
• 7 Weeks to 100 Push Ups*
  *Because I'm doing both of these programs at the same time I'm adding an additional rest day every week, making it last 8 weeks. 
• Once completed I'll repeat the last week of one program, alternating weeks, to maintain.

Part Three, Core & Balance (Begins after completing the first set of Part Two)

• Essential Abs, an intense 6-week program
• Indo Board balance trainer 20 minutes 3x per week** 
  **In addition to just riding and practicing spins, I'll be doing leg exercises like squats, etc. to work my stabilizer muscles

Don't say I didn't warn you, powder. You will feel my wrath! I *will* shred you, with gusto, soon!

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Phew... I just competed in the Node Knockout competition this weekend. Myself and two guys I have never met (Nick Campbell and Tim Mansfield), came together without ever meeting face-to-face (Nick is in VA and Tim is in Long Beach) to build a web app in 48-hours starting Friday at 5pm Pacific! It was my first dive into a full-scale Node.js application which meant I got to play with some new stuff like jade and linode. I'm sure I'll have some time to expound on all that later, but here's a quick glimpse at what we built:

Greetings, Cardling!

Our app is a real-time, collaborative, greeting card application that allows you to create a greeting card for someone. You can include a typed message, a doodle (via your iPad, mouse, or laptop trackpad), and a voice greeting.

Then, once you're done there is an animated card with a secret URL (which you receive via email) that you can share with friends so that they too can sign the card. Meanwhile, the recipient receives an email informing them of their card's location, etc. We didn't have a ton of time to work on card artwork, but we also have a feature that allows users to create their own card themes and upload them!

As you might expect it isn't fully polished, but there are a lot of interesting bits of web tech at work here and it was a lot of fun to build! Am I tired as hell? Yes. Would I do it again? Yes. Go ahead and sign my card, or create a new one! While you're there go vote for us using the little button in the upper right corner of the app! 

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Been using Heroku and GitHub while working on the new Powder Envy website. Thought it'd be good to share my config file template:

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[core]
  repositoryformatversion = 0
  filemode = true
  bare = false
  logallrefupdates = true
  ignorecase = true

[remote "origin"]
  fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*
  url = git@github.com:userName/repoName.com.git

  [branch "master"]
    remote = origin
    merge = refs/heads/master

  [branch "development"]
    remote = origin
    merge = refs/heads/development

  [branch "v/1"]
    remote = origin
    merge = refs/heads/v/1


[remote "production"]
  fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/production/*
  url = git@heroku.com:appName-production.git

  [branch "heroku-production"]
    remote = production
    merge = refs/heads/master


[remote "staging"]
  fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/staging/*
  url = git@heroku.com:appName-staging.git

  [branch "heroku-staging"]
    remote = staging
    merge = refs/heads/master

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I mentioned previously that I've hired my younger brother, Dosty, as an intern... Well, it's been a few weeks now, and things couldn't have gone much better! So, what has he been up to? How are things going? I guess it's fair to say, thanks to the many lessons Bill Murray has taught me over the years, that things are going off like ghostbusters!

1. Keep things loose

2. Baby steps

In the movie "What About Bob?" Bill Murray uses a mantra he learns from Richard Dreyfuss' character, baby steps, to overcome his various debilitating fears including his fear of germs, moving vehicles, other people, and turrets.

"Baby steps down the hall... baby steps onto the elevator... I'm on an elevator!" (Door closes followed by horrified shrieks of terror.)

Knowing that I've been at this for many years longer than my brother, "baby steps" became my mantra from the start. I sat down and listed all the things big and small we could try and accomplish. Then, going over my list, I identified things that would be bite-sized enough for him to handle early on while providing useful experience he could put to use in subsequent steps.

1. The first baby step I had him make was fixing a bug with my portfolio site. The facebook like button had stopped working, and, while I was sure it was just as simple as updating the generated code, I hadn't yet had the time to get to it. It offered him a chance to solve a problem about which he had no prior knowledge. Also, since my codebase is on github it required him to learn the basics of git and version control software (a vital key to the way software developers work). Once he fixed it he first just tried to email me the code... Git *is* daunting, I get it. So, likely seeming bull-headed, I asked him to commit the fix to my repo so I could test it and push it live to the server. After working through a couple of growing pains with git the obstacle was overcome, the fix was tested and pushed, and we moved along.
2. The second baby step was to build a blog theme for posterous based on my portfolio's design (which he had just accessed via git before). Once again he had to learn something completely new (while not complex), without training wheels. First he had to figure out how posterous themes work, then he had to learn to hack them to fit a non-standard design. After a lot of hacking here we are! Cool.

3. Repetition is the key to mastery

1. I sent him a new layout to make for Lucky Nerds. I gave him an image mock up, the assets, colors, fonts, and some general tips for setting things up via email, and he set off making another step. Creating something from nothing to a client's specification, how thrilling! He coded it up within a day. Awesome! He really figured the whole templating posterous thing out.
2. Finally, I had him set up his own posterous theme. No problem.
3. Wanting to push him elsewhere I had him get the luckynerds.com domain working with google apps so we could have some personalized email from that domain. This required him to mess around with DNS. In spite of its newness to him, he got this going pretty quick. 
4. So, I asked him to point luckynerds.com's A-record at the posterous blog he had set up just before. After what seemed like initial success, we realized there was a small hurdle with getting the DNS to point at the blog from the registrar's DNS manager. So, I set up an Easy DNS account and had him transfer the appropriate settings over there. Next thing you know we have email, the site points to the appropriate places, and he's learned and re-learned some simple DNS stuff.
5. Not to let him off the hook too early I bought him a domain at another registrar for his personal blog and had him set up the DNS for it from that site's DNS manager. So, he's now had the chance to mess around with DNS at several different places with very different tools at each. I'm pretty stoked to declare that he definitely ramps up pretty quick.

4. What's next?

PS - Bill [f*king] Murray, son!

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Hey! Check it out, my posterous blog now has a theme based on my Cousinwil site!

The coolest part? It was put together by my little brother, Dosty, who's currently an engineering student at the Milwaukee School of Engineering! This summer he's going to work with me on some of my personal sites and visit SF to see what the start-up scene is all about! Fun times... He'll also be blogging about some of the random things he's doing over on his posterous blog, check it out.

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What role does intent, execution, and motive play into the definition of, "spammer?" To me it's an interesting question. At some point is my open post to twitter on a given topic an invitation to response? And, does it matter if this intent was interpreted programatically rather than manually? If I use a bot to start a genuine conversation, is that conversation less genuine? Is there a difference between corporate and recreational use? These are some things I've been playing with and pondering recently.

Powder Envy, harmless enough, I guess...

So, I have this small little one-page web application called "Powder Envy." It pulls in tweets from users talking about any of the 380 or so North American ski areas or mentioning "skiing" and/or "snowboarding" in "powder," filtering for words like garlic, chili, talc, etc, etc to try and ensure we are displaying ski tweets not grilled salmon recipes. Then it displays them in a cute setting with a simple animation. It also displays things like snowfall and on-topic tweet volume.

Tonight, after reading "The State of Twitter Spam" at the Twitter Blog, however, I turned off one feature of Powder Envy, a little script called, "Pals." This script does not follow users, it does not unfollow users... It just asks my database for a list of distinct users and checks it against a list of users I've responded to... if I've sent a message to them I skip them, otherwise I send them a message aimed at engaging them to respond to me, like, "@username Saw your tweet, where is the good snow?! :) http://powderenvy.com/t/username" or "@username Going to ride more this yr? Saw your tweet, let’s be pals! http://powderenvy.com/t/username."

And, here's what happened. In general I'd have 20-30 new responses every morning when I woke up and another dozen plus during the day to keep up with... If they responded I would send them a personal response, check out their projects, become their twitter pal, etc. In one week "pals" sent around 8,000 tweets. From that I received traffic to over 2,900 unique links of my one page website... Meaning > 36% of users clicked their link! @PowderEnvy added 50-80 followers a day who all took the initiative to follow me first. Most surprisingly these "spam" tweets were actually RTed by users over 120 times. Five of the replies I had were negative. I responded to all of them personally and used their feedback to improve the application.

There were, I think, very obvious reasons for the success of this short campaign that are attributable to things which humans can perceive (and, perhaps, machines cannot) which is motive. When your motive is fun, and that just happens to be the user's motive, unsolicited messages are cool! When your motive is selling timeshares, not so much. When it's @GoldenGrahams replying to me playfully because I just tweeted about my midnight snack I laugh and follow, because they're being fun.

I'd love your thoughts, too. Where's the line? When is it cool to receive a message I didn't ask for, and at what point when posting a public message about a topic have I asked for it?

@cousinwil

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"Never, f*k flash..." is where I always start, but let me climb off that statement slightly and ask, "What are you trying to do that can't be done in HTML5 and AJAX?"

I'll concede the minority of instances when it is okay to use flash, like:

1. When developing cross-domain widgets that use secure connections to embed data into a 3rd party website.
2. When animators rely on flash tweening to create their shorts, or for exporting to after effects, et cetera, but I guess that ceases to be a website feature anyway...
3. When you don't care about mobility, search engines, memory/cpu usage, or accessibility.

Otherwise, find a front end developer who can write some valid HTML and unobtrusive JavaScript for you. I'm talking to you restaurateurs, ski resorts, clothing companies, and e-commerce sites! Your gratuitous slide shows and "fancy introductions," which are all easily achievable with simple jQuery, are costing you customers these days, not gaining them. Virgin America isn't the first company to figure this out, they won't be the last.

Edit April 26, 2010: Check out Steve Jobs' reasoning for passing on flash. That Steve Jobs, always jumping on the @cousinwil bandwagon...

Miss ya, Love ya, Bye!

Cousin Wil
UI Geek to the Fabulously Beautiful
http://st.eeze.us

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I created a new, "clean" account at last.fm a year ago on Christmas day. Mainly because I wanted to see a better snapshot of the year, once it ended. It does a poor job of scrobbing my iPhone plays, but there was a lot of iTunes activity this year. After 23.779 days (570+ hours) listening to music on iTunes I give you, "My top 30 most listened to artists of 2009."

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Today was a beautiful day in the city! I hopped on my bike early this afternoon and couldn't help but smile as everywhere I looked people were out walking dogs, shopping, and pedaling their own bikes around. As I eased up Fell I was swept into a line-up of cyclists doing the same... The girl ahead of me had bright sunny clothes on and a beach bag, brimming with the makings of a picnic. Ahead of her rode your basic "punk-rock" cyclists, the girl, jet black hair, rode a bmx, fought to keep up with her boyfriend, riding a fixie with a cut-off tee and jeans, no helmets to be found. Behind me a man with gray hair rode steadily along in a yellow slicker, helmet, saddle bags.

The panhandle was all smiles. A pair of old hippies sat on a bench smoking out, attempting to look like they weren't. Dogs were running their owners ragged, hanging their tongues in the breeze. An impromptu bicycle repair shop sprouted up in the grass across from the basketball courts, where games were in full swing on one set of courts while the skaters hit a small launch ramp on the other. As the panhandle ran out and the park opened up ahead a slender woman, serious about her cycling, passed me wearing an outfit that surely makes her twice as fast...

Golden Gate Park was a sea of bicycles, skateboards, rollerblades, big wheels, lindy-hoppers, volley ball and soccer players, people with remote control boats, children flying kites, hot dog vendors all in full celebration of the summer in San Francisco. I pedaled with purpose, picking up speed, feeling the wind in my face, my breath growing long and purposeful as I left the closed area of the park. I hit top gear, passing a car looking for parking and tourists taking pictures of the buffalo to my right. I picked it up another notch, ignoring the warmth of my breath and the strain on my body as I hurried, fast-fast-faster, all the way to the ocean! As the coast came into view I slowed, let go of the handle bars and coasted, stretching my back and breathing in the ocean air! What an amazing ride... how is it I don't do that every day?

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